Waiting, Again
by keyascribe
Summary: Gojyo always gets stuck being the one to wait.


Disclaimer: Not mine at all, all hail Kazuya Minekura.

Spoilers for Volume 7.

Waiting, Again

Gojyo wants to kill something.

No, scratch that, Gojyo's one of the good guys, and even if the good guys leave a swatch of dispatched – Sanzo's word – pounded – Gokuu's word – beaten – Gojyo's word – _dead_ – Hakkai's word that he never says but always thinks – enemies behind and beside and around them, the good guys don't ever _want_ to kill. They do dispatch and pound and beat and kill, and sometimes they angst about it, because they're never allowed to like it or else then they'll turn into the bad guys. .

Only Cho Gonou has ever wanted to kill, and he doesn't count because he's just a shadow and hell, they all have ugly shadows, except for Sanzo whose shadow is prettier than he is. But Gojyo doesn't want to think about Sanzo right now.

Right now, Gojyo feels like he wants to kill something.

Feeling like that is okay, not exactly pleasant but it happens, when you're quivering from the last rotten thing that just happened and you're so angry that you're seeing red . . . Not the red you always see that hangs down in front of your eyes, but a darker, deeper red that washes over your vision and your thoughts and your body – although some of that's real red left over from Gokuu and Hakkai.

Gojyo wants to cry. At least, he might want to cry, if he wasn't so pissed off and wound up and covered in his friends' blood. He might just want to sit and howl like a stray dog if it wasn't for the fact that all he had done was just stand there while Hakkai battled the goddamned Seiten Tasei, for Christ's sake, and Gokuu fought . . . .but what words could describe Hakkai like that, it was like hearing all one's life that blood is red, seeing little pinpricks of it every now and then, and then suddenly having your stomach cut open and watching an ocean of hot crimson cascade everywhere.

So Gojyo might want to cry, if he had any right to be dramatic when he hadn't helped one damn bit. It doesn't help to know that Hakkai would say that statement was incorrect, if he wasn't so busy being nearly dead. He's more nearly dead now than he was yesterday, although not as nearly dead as the day before that, when he was, for that brief moment of pure terror, completely dead.

_Then _Gojyo hadn't wanted to cry or kill. _Then_, hands pumping at Hakkai's still heart, what Gojyo had wanted more than anything he had ever wanted before, was to see Hakkai's eyes open and look at him. And when Hakkai gasped and breathed and looked at him, all Gojyo had wanted to do was enfold Hakkai in a protective embrace so that nothing could ever touch him again – or barring that, to punch him one for being so powerful that Hakkai was able being able to do what _Hakkai_ wanted, which was to die saving someone.

(If Sanzo were here, he would sardonically ask if Gojyo was jealous, either of Hakkai having that power or of him choosing to save someone else . . . and maybe Gojyo will be later, when he's not so desperate and crumbled and angry and wanting . . .)

That's it. That's what Gojyo wants. Gojyo wants to smack the hell out of Hakkai. Hakkai who dared throw his life away again. Hakkai who, the moment he was able to walk as far as the next room, stumbled over and healed Gokuu's wounds and then collapsed in (another) steadily bleeding heap on the floor. Hakkai, whose eyes look twice as deep and endless as normal with his face so pale and neither pupil slitted in a golden youkai's eye.

Yes, Hakkai, who is being a polite and patient invalid and ignoring all of Gojyo's orders and who, if Gojyo did pop him one, would simply look at him. Not with a hurt look or a surprised look, but with that look that Gojyo can never do anything about.

So Gojyo can't kill and he can't cry and he sure as hell can't grab Hakkai, shake him until he's dizzy and then wrap his arms around him and never let go. Neither can he do these things to Gokuu, who is still sleeping in the other room.

Normally, then, Gojyo would solve this dilemna by getting mad – madder – at Sanzo. However, this time Sanzo is not here and that makes the anger of a different sort, something cold and hard and neither relieving nor productive.

And even though there are still three of them and he's not left alone like he had been half certain he would be a few days ago when Sanzo had bolted and Gokuu had been changed and Hakkai had changed himself, Sanzo isn't back. So he can't laugh half hysterically like he might normally want to, either.

He does want to smoke, but he's worried about Hakkai because it's a little hard to tell what all Gokuu's claws pierced. So he just stares at his lighter and remembers but doesn't want to, that this isn't the first time he's sat in a quiet hotel room staring at this lighter as he waits for his friends to wake up.

Except _that_ time he was waiting or three people, and it wasn't this lighter at all. He lost that lighter somewhere in the middle of a fight. Gokuu laughed at him and Hakkai suggested brightly that perhaps it was a good time to stop smoking. But Sanzo just wordlessly tossed him his and bought a new one at the next town.

So easy. Gojyo wonders if _he_ should get a new lighter. This one's running down on fluid. But he doesn't really want to just yet. He doesn't want to do much of anything, just yet, except sit and listen to Hakkai breathing and try to guess when the monkey will wake up.

Maybe by the time he figures out what he really really wants to do, Sanzo will be back.

But until then, he'll watch Hakkai and Gokuu, and the way the big white moon that's cresting the horizon gleams in the lighter in his hand.


End file.
